Blackshear Elementary School

Blackshear's work reached past Austin's classrooms. In May 1884 he was named principal of the summer normal school for Black teachers held at Goliad. While he led Prairie View he earned a master's degree from Tabor College in 1902, served as president of the Teachers State Association of Texas in 1903-04, and formed the Negro State Farmers' Congress of Texas, which he led for several years. In 1913 the National Negro Farmers' Congress elected him president. In 1915 he took charge of government extension work for Kansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. He died in 1919 and is buried in Hempstead.

What the plaque says

Blackshear Elementary School Opened in 1891 to provide free public education to African-American children in the community then known as Gregory Town, Blackshear Elementary School was known in earlier years as School no. 3, Gregory Town School and Gregory School. In 1936, it was named for Edward L. Blackshear (1862-1919), a 19th-century teacher and principal who left Austin in 1895 to become head of Prairie View College. Programs and facilities for Blackshear students, including the establishment of a school library in 1934, expanded as the number of students increased. Now serving an ethnically diverse population in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade classes, Blackshear is an important part of Austin's educational history. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Cemetery — 0.2 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.3 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.6 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.2 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• Tillotson College — steps away
• George Washington Carver Branch Library — 0.3 mi
• John A. Wharton — 0.3 mi
• Laurine Cecil Anderson — 0.3 mi